During the Washington State Legislative Sessions, Washington State PTA will send action alerts and informational broadcasts to WSPTA members who have subscribed to WSPTA's Action Network Group. These action alerts are quick, easy ways to communicate with our legislators on topics they are actively working on that relate to WSPTA's legislative platform.

At our November 5, 2018 General Membership Meeting, we heard an informative and inspiring call to action from speaker JMarie Johnson-Cola regarding Family & Community Engagement (FACE). Each child must be supported by, not only parents and teachers, but extended families, school districts, neighbors and community members to help them realize their full potential.

Meeting this challenge requires ensuring that all families and communities—not just econom­ically advantaged ones—have what it takes to build equitable learning pathways for their children, including high-quality schools and out-of-school learn­ing opportunities. Achieving this requires a major shift in thinking—a shift from devaluing and doing to and for families to one of valuing and cocreating with them. The latter approach foregrounds asking questions, listening, empowering, sharing perspectives and information, part­nering, codesigning, implementing, and assessing new approaches and solutions, and supporting parent leader­ship and advocacy for educational equity and change.

On November 7, 2018, Northshore Council PTSA and Northshore School District, in partnership with the American Lung Association, hosted a community presentation: "Tobacco use is changing, are you keeping up?" The presentation offering information about the changing face of tobacco products, how they are affecting youth and what you need to know to educate and protect our children from what the FDA has called an epidemic among teens.

On Monday, November 5th, 2018, National PTA, in partnership with Sandy Hook Promise, offered a joint webinar “School Safety – Mobilizing for Change.” The webinar focus was on action -- what family members and PTAs can do to ensure that schools are safe and supportive places for our children to learn.

Parents, students, school staff and community members are invited to attend an educational presentation titled, "Tobacco use is changing, are you keeping up?" on Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at the Northshore Performing Arts Center (18125 92nd Ave NE, Bothell, WA 98011) from 6:15-7:30 p.m.

Come learn about the changing face of tobacco products, how they are affecting youth and what you need to know to educate and protect our children from what the FDA has called an epidemic among teens. Speaker Lora Mednick, Health Promotions Coordinator at the American Lung Association in Washington, supports tobacco prevention and tobacco cessation programs and resource-sharing for youth and adults. She will be sharing information and answering questions regarding vaping, electronic nicotine delivery devices (ENDS), and more.

At Washington State PTA's 40th annual Legislative Assembly, October 20-21 at Green River College in Auburn, WA, PTA delegates from around the state gathered together for presentations, education, debate and decision-making surrounding advocacy and building the new WSPTA legislative platform. Many thanks to all of the delegates from Northshore PTAs/PTSAs who participated in the process, as well as Northshore Council delegates Carrie McKenzie, Robin McKenzie, and Marcilla Proudfit.

Delegates approved three new legislative principles, four new resolutions as well as one amended resolution. In addition, a new two-year legislative platform was approved and the top five issues decided:

Top Five Issues:

Social Emotional Learning

School Construction and Simple Majority for Bonds

Prevent Gun Violence

Strategies to Address the Teacher Shortage

Strategic K-12 Investments to Close Gaps

Also Supported Issues include:

Best Practices for School Meals - Lunch

Best Practices for School Recess

Engaging Families in Student Success

Fund Paraeducator Training

Increase Access to High-Quality Preschool

Raise the Age of Tobacco and Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems to 21

Safe School Plans and Emergency Preparedness

Be on the lookout for more details and supporting handouts on these issues in the coming weeks. For more information on these issues and to find out how you can get involved and support WSPTA advocacy efforts, visit the WSPTA Advocacy page.

During the Washington State Legislative Sessions, WSPTA will send action alerts and informational broadcasts to WSPTA members who have subscribed to WSPTA's Action Network Group. These action alerts are quick, easy ways to communicate with our legislators on topics they are actively working on that relate to WSPTA's legislative platform. You can sign up here: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/subscribe-to-wsptas-action-network-group.

If you are interested in learning more about how you and/or your PTA can use these platform issues to advocate at a local level, you can also reach out to Northshore Council's Advocacy VPs, Nancy Chamberlain and Charla Griffy Brown.

Some of the issue, resolution and principle submitters who participated in Legislative Assembly 2018 posed for a photo with WSPTA President, Michelle Nims (second from right).

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Bullying can happen anywhere-- wherever kids gather in the community-- and cyber-bullying occurs on cell phones and online. Bullying Prevention Month works to encourage communities to work together to stop bullying and cyber-bullying by increasing awareness of the prevalence and impact of bullying on all children of all ages.

Washington State PTA's Legislative Principles regarding Safe and Nurturing Environments for Children and Youth explicitly support anti-bullying and anti-harassment. Additionally, a number of resolutions specifically address bullying, including:

On Monday, October 1, 2018, Northshore Council PTSA sponsored a Candidates Forum featuring candidates vying for state legislative positions in the 1st, 45th and 46th districts.

Candidates introduced themselves and then the forum began with questions that were solicited from the community and pre-selected in advance. All candidates were asked the same question, but the order was evenly rotated so that candidates took turns being the first to answer a question. Each candidate was allowed one minute to respond. Then there was a "lightning round" wherein each candidate was allowed 20 seconds to respond to each question. The evening ended with questions from the forum audience.

Many thanks to the 14 candidates who participated in the forum, including Derek Stanford, Debra Blodgett, Shelley Kloba, Manka Dhingra, Dale Fonk, Michael Curtis, Roger Goodman, Amber Krabach, Larry Springer, Beth Daranciang, David Frockt, Gerry Pollet, and Javier Valdez, as well as to the community members who made time to attend the event.

For those who were unable to attend in person, we are excited to be able to offer a recording of the event:

If you have looked at Council's 2018-19 calendar, you may have noticed that we have included information about awareness months throughout the year. We hope that these may be helpful for you as you think about advocacy, meeting or parent education topics and more!

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, working to raise awareness about the learning disorder that involves difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters and other symbols. In Washington state, nearly 1 in 5 students, or about 20% of the population, is impacted by by language-based learning disorders such as dyslexia.

Last year, the Washington State Legislature passed SB 6162, defining dyslexia and mandating development and implementation of screening processes and appropriate interventions in schools over the next few years.

Washington State PTA Resolution 18.32 supports early screening for signs and symptoms of language processing disorders including but not limited to dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, with parental notification; and supports legislation for funding to support training of parents, teachers and other school personnel in early identification of language processing disorders and use of evidence based programs that provide explicit instruction including Multi-sensory Structured Language Teaching, with appropriate accommodations to provide students with equitable access to the general education curriculum.

The 40th annual WSPTA Legislative Assembly will take place October 20-21, 2018 at Green River College, Auburn, WA. PTA delegates from across the state will come together to set a new platform of legislative priorities for the 2018-2020 legislative session in support of our vision of "Making every child's potential a reality." Delegates will have the opportunity to debate, amend, and vote on long-term resolutions and principles that were brought forth by the members through the grassroots submission process late last spring. In addition, the assembly will vote on new short-term platform issues that WSPTA will focus on in the upcoming legislative session.